The design or structure of a tax affects the kinds of incentives and inefficiencies imposed upon the economy. Some taxes are simply much more inefficient. Let's say most taxes are inefficient, but some are much more inefficient than others, which leads to, I'd say, almost a consensus among tax economists that taxes on capital and investment income and business income are more distorting to the economy than taxes on consumption or labour income, which leads to the preference for consumption-based types of taxes, whether they're done through sales-type taxes, indirect taxes, or through direct personal taxes like what we call our personal income tax.
The evidence for this is cross-national. The countries with some of the highest tax overall burdens in the world are those of Scandinavia, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands. They're still able to perform very well as economies, but they do it through sensible tax structure.
Now, this does not mean that you or I have to favour a very high tax level. That's a matter of choice. But it's saying that whatever level of taxes we want, whether we want big or smaller government, we should pursue a structure that promotes growth and economic efficiency, and that pushing the tax system even further toward consumption-based and labour-income-based is the way to do it.